Page:Mary Whiton Calkins - Henri Bergson - Personalist (The Philosophical Review, 1912-11-01).pdf/2

№ &#93; us. For the careful reading of the passages, in Matière et Mémoire, in which Bergson criticises idealism discloses the fact that the idealism which he opposes is often qualified by the tell-tale term ‘subjective,’ and that while he sharply criticizes associationism, representative idealism, and dualistic spiritualism, he never argues against that humanistic or personalistic form of idealism which, in truth, is the background of all his teaching.

The conception of matter as contained in L’évolution créatrice offers a greater difficulty. This will be discussed as the concluding section of a brief analysis of Bergson’s teachings which aims to bring his personalism into clear relief. Bergson’s characteristic doctrines may be summarized under two main heads: his doctrine of self and its environment, and his doctrine of nature, the universe in its totality. The first is the topic of Bergson’s earlier works and includes his discussions of duration and freedom, of mechanism, and of body and mind. His conception of nature is the theme of L’évolution créatrice.

I. (a) It has already appeared that Bergson conceives duration in personal terms. He refers to “our feeling of duration, that is to say, of the coincidence of our ego with itself (de notre moi avec lui-même)” and says: “To touch the reality of spirit one must place oneself at the point at which an individual consciousness prolongs and preserves the past in a present. Duration is here conceived as the creation of spirit. In still another passage it is thus defined: “Pure duration is the form which the succession of our states of consciousness assumes when our ego lets itself live (quand notre moi ‘se laisse vivre).” “Time,” he elsewhere says, “coincides with my impatience.” These expressions, which might be multiplied indefinitely, show clearly that Bergson